A few days ago, we wrote about Google's new My Account interface, which had its material design debut coinciding with Google I/O. The new interface makes checking and adjusting your security and privacy settings both beautiful and easy.

The My Account page wasn't the only account management tool that got some material love though - Google's account history interface has also received a facelift. The account history page now ties together all your history from various Google services - history is broken into Web & App, Voice & Audio, Device info, Location, YouTube Watch, and YouTube Search, along with a general heading to turn on or off history for each of the above sections.

Every corner of the interface is new, and comes with the same awesome illustration style as My Account. You can even listen to past voice queries, and finally recall what your voice sounded like when you searched your calendar for "pretzel bread" one night in April - the only thing it can't tell you is why.

Comments

It's so creepy (but frickin' awesome) that I can listen to the audio of every voice search I've ever made from any Google-connected device, including the 'OK Google' part.

Vu Viet Anh

More creepy than awesome...

I think i might belong to the minority here, but I don't really like the way Android is getting more and more invasive into how I use my tech devices.

Of course the argument is that I can always opt out if I want to, but the way Google implement these services make me shudder to think about the direction Android is going.

Maybe it's about time I look at other OSes that don't want so much information out of my usage behavior.

atlouiedog

I'd be shocked if Siri and Cortana aren't also done server side and saved to improve recognition. See my reply about Samsung.

Vu Viet Anh

I'm sure they do, but Google's integration is on a much deeper level than just voice recognition.

Google now creeped me out a bit, and now Google photos too. Maybe I'm just overthinking it though, so we'll see.

mlj11

I don't think it's getting "more" invasive. It's always been like that (and I'm sure it's the same for every other connected service we sign up to use); we're just creeped out because Google's account history has given us a glimpse into how far this invasiveness extends.

On the flip side I'm glad there's enough transparency and flexibility on Google's end to allow us to manage our own account history settings.

See, your reasoning for not liking this is my very exact reason for liking something like this. It kills me when people try to imply that Google isn't transparent when things like this, to me, say they are very transparent. What other tech company is letting you see this much of what they have on you?

All I've read from what you said is that you rather go to some other OS that does the same thing (and you know they do, probably more so too) but keeps it to themselves. Sometimes I wish Google wasn't so transparent because ignorance is bliss...

h

"What other tech company is letting you see this much of what they have on you?"

The bar is so low, no one deserves any applause for crossing it.

Đức Thành

Paranoid much? If you're afraid for your privacy freedom by seeing this much, wait till someone discovers the very fundamental rules of the physical world and finds out that the universe is predeterministic, and there exists no free will. I'd love to see your reaction then, I bet it'd be hilarious.

Normann

Constraints and coercion are very different notions. Freedom is not about the lack of the former: it's only about the lack of the latter, whatever dimwitted hippies may "think".

Đức Thành

Precisely, do you see any coercion?

pfmiller

What is it about Photos that creeps you out?

Andrew Kennedy

What people don't realize is that it is impossible to improve the quality of personal services like google now without collecting personal data. If you want voice recognition to work well, you need to store your voice and build a model based on it. That is now recognition works, even in the non computer world. Computers are not magical at all. They need reference data, and it has to be stored somewhere. Most people are just too unaware of how technology works to realize this has to be the case, and other companies don't provide an interface to view and download all the data.

This "Google is so creepy OMG" business is getting old. You simply can't have predictive services without a stored past to predict from.

saf1927

Maybe it's time for you to stop using a smartphone and rely on the ol' good dumbphones?

atlouiedog

A friend of mine pointed me in the direction of one of those sites similar to Amazon mturk that gives small payments for activities. They were asking people to rate the accuracy of voice searches and you'd get to listen to the recorded audio along with what their recognition software thought was said.

After going through a couple of dozen it became clear that it was from Samsung's voice search (lots of use of the word Galaxy) and it was much more than just simple commands or searches. There were a lot of kids and older people just talking to the device. "Hey, Galaxy, I'm bored. Are you having a better day?"

THAT was creepy.

Gregory

I just turned ALL the search histories off the day I became aware they exist... It's soooo creepy for me when there are any logs of what I search on the internet. I want my anonymity back.